European Project adressing the safety
of blood transfusion

Manuals of good practice safegarding the ‚vein’ to ‚vein’ process

Ensuring that ‘patients who receive blood transfusion in the European Union are given safe blood’ is a major objective within the framework of public health on the national and European level. The introduction of advanced technologies for the collection, processing and testing of blood during the last decade has resulted in extremely high quality and safety standards of blood and blood components. Increasing importance has been addressed to establish effective quality management systems for blood establishments. Those systems enable to optimise the control and monitoring of the complex and sophisticated processes covered by modern blood establishments. A key element of quality systems is to define a common quality policy, using standard process or operating procedures as an important tool for transposition. Routine inspections of those processes are elementary to control the implementation process, perform risk-based assessments and to garantee continuous improvement.

It is hoped that these Manuals will contribute to the understanding and management of quality processes in blood services and assist blood establishments in preparing for the inspection of their services and if wished by competent authorities in assisting the implementation process related to quality relevant elements required by European Union legislation.

The editors herewith express their sincere appreciation to the participating institutions and their representatives, as well as to the team of advisors, in particular to Dr. Jeroen deWit, Ms. Frances Delaney, Dr. Margarethe Heiden, Dr. Helga Marie Huber, Mrs. Wiebke Siegel and Mr. Angus Macmillan Douglas (OBE) for their continued cooperation, collaboration and support throughout the life of this undertaking. The project coordinators also acknowledge the effort and spirit of Dr. Fewzi Teskrat, Mr. Boudewijn Hinloopen, Dr. Jan Peter Jansen van Galen, Mr. Jan Ceulemans, Dr. Alex Aquilina and Mr. Mark Nightingale in developing educational material for training purposes. Their willingness to share their expertise and experience at the national level on the use of the manual is gratefully appreciated.

The project participants also express their gratitude for the constructive cooperation with the representatives of the European Commission – Mr. Tapani Piha, Dr. Eduardo Fernandez-Zincke, Mrs. Patricia Brunko and Mr. Thomas Bregeon. Finally, the project participants acknowledge the support given by the European Blood Alliance at present and in sustaining the future dissemination of the Project’s deliverables and the continual development of its ideas.